Who the heck cares what Ken Duberstein says?

Ken Duberstein, former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and super-connected Washington insider¹, has made some waves, or at least caused a ripple, by saying that he'll be voting for Barack Obama.

Wolf Blitzer asked James Carville and Bill Bennett today what they thought about that. Bennett dismissed Blitzer's question with: "Who the heck cares what Ken Duberstein says?"

Well, I do. Ken Duberstein is my cousin², and for years now, every time I hear his name — my maiden name — or see it in print, I cringe. Duberstein is a pretty uncommon name. If my maiden name were Smith or Goldberg, I'm sure I wouldn't react so viscerally to its public mention.

The McCain camp is dismissive, too, calling their erstwhile ally's turnabout sour grapes. But I applaud his decision. It helps remove what I considered a blot on the family's copybook.

---

¹ John Harwood and Gerald Seib, in Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power, devote a whole chapter to him, headed "The Fixer."

² Ken's older sister, Susan, was my classmate in high school, but we were never close. Ken is five years younger — which made him a kid then, and thus totally out of our orbit. If I recall correctly their father, Aaron, was a macher with the Boy Scouts of America. He was a Republican. My father and he, second cousins, never had much contact.